Self-Publishing with Blurb

I recently decided to take the self-publishing book company Blurb for a spin. Before Christmas I compiled some pictures together that my husband and I had taken on our trip to Paris back in May to celebrate our 25th Wedding Anniversary.

I thought a nice photo book would make a great keepsake of our trip and a nice surprise for my husband. So off I went and to see what Blurb could offer me. I was pleasantly impressed.

This is a very simple easy to use program. Simply download the BookSmart program. It’s an easy drag and drop interface with plenty of options to customize the book to your own personal preferences. In fact after creating this book, I’m excited to take on some other projects.

The price is certainly within your control. Naturally the bigger your book the more expensive the book becomes but it's all relative to what you want to create.

For example a small book 7 x 7 square with 20 pages starts at $11.95 up to a large square 12x12 starting at $49.95. I chose the large landscape book with Imagewrap cover. It it a beautiful gorgeous high-end coffee table book.

Blurb also offers black and white trade books. The trade books offer a 4 colour cover and are perfect for text based books. memoirs, poetry, novels and story collections. A 5x8 starts at $3.95 or 6x9 for $4.95.

Blurb can also create specialized notebooks and planners with your favourite photos. You can also upload your Facebook and Instagram photos. Blurb will enhance the image resolution of your photos for print-ability and in a few you can create a book of your 2012 photos.

By simply uploading your pictures from your own files into the program and then dragging and dropping the pictures into the book you are well on your way to creating a book in minutes. You can add text to the pages. I kept my book simple with a few quotes.

Now my husband and I are in no way professional photographers. Our camera was a cheap little $100.00 Nikon that is several years old. I did not make any adjustments to the pictures. Just dragged and dropped. As you can see in the pictures Blurb made them look brilliant. When my husband unwrapped the book he thought I had bought him a book about Paris from a book store. It wasn’t until he started flipping through the book that he realized they were our pictures. Thanks Blurb, the book was a success and I look forward to creating many more books with Blurb.

I now have a long list of projects for Blurb books. A special ancestor photo book, a family history book, a family heritage cookbook, baby books, family vacations, the list is endless. As well I’ll take a look at using Blurb to create a family history blog to book. I got a new camera for Christmas and a copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom . I'm excited about the possibilities.

Presently Blurb is offering 15% off all Blurb photo books with the promo code LOVEBOOKS.
This promotion runs until February 14th 11:59pm local time…hmm just in time for Valentine’s Day.

What a thoughtful gift that would make. Who needs chocolate. This offer may not be used in conjunction with any other offers, volume discounts or retroactively applied to any previous orders. Simply include the code when you check out.

So if you haven’t used Blurb before I can highly recommend this company. It makes quick work of creating gorgeous books.

(I am an affiliate of Blurb and will make a small commission if you purchase through the links above. But seriously, you won't be disappointed.)

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